Need some information

[u/AnarchistTerrarist]

Howdy, I've been using a decade-old PC on win10 for the last few years and been intending to just wait to get a newer laptop in a couple months to convert it and the PC both to Linux, but various reasons have led me to think I aught to at least have it downloaded ready to install, and at that point I'm thinking I might just be smart to go ahead and install it soon. But I've got to ask a couple questions.

Firstly, system requirements? I know Linux is praised for being lightweight and all but I also know a potato PC nowadays is about half what this medieval hunk of metal has. How are the requirements on the three editions of Mint? Or more specifically how much do they actually use, especially the RAM and such.

And second is updates. I'm just curious how those work. Am I able to disable them, choose what gets added/changed, etc?

Also curious on the customizability, though I don't have any specifics on that front, just curious if there's interesting things that y'all'd like to mention.

And any other beginner things I may need to know, including what size of a USB stick I need since it seems like I need one of those?

[u/RespecDawn]

I'm running Linux Mint Cinnamon on my 10 year old gaming laptop (i7, 16gb RAM, 1050ti), and it's absolutely fine. I initially choose Mint specifically because it has good driver support for older gpus. What are your specs?

The updates are SOOOO nice compared to Windows. the Update Manager will get a red dot in the task bar icon, I'll click, and it'll give me a list of updates. I can check or uncheck them as I choose, but generally just install them all. The only exception is a kernel update. I'm running an older kernel (6.8) because it supports the older Nvidia driver I need). Anyway, after you open the manager, you just click "install updates", and it does all the work in the background while you go on with whatever you were doing. Restarts are rarely needed.

I'm still exploring customization, so someone else can help you with that.

[u/AnarchistTerrarist → u/RespecDawn]

My CPU is the AMD A4-5300B with AMD Radeon HD 7480D IGP, 4GB of RAM installed, and 740MB VRAM. Pretty ancient lol.

Also good to know the Kernel can remain unupdated.

[u/RespecDawn → u/AnarchistTerrarist]

Yup. I'm using 6.8 and will not change. It's supported until 2029, and newer kernels don't play well with the drivers I need for my GPU.

I think you could try Cinnamon and see if it works, but Xfce or Mate are there if it's too much.

[u/GreatGreenGobbo → u/AnarchistTerrarist]

With 4gigs go with XFCE.

[u/Vagabond_Grey → u/AnarchistTerrarist]

4GB of RAM is what I consider the minimum for Cinnamon. Mint Xfce is the most lightweight version.

Assuming you have already backed up your data on the PC (or, have nothing of value stored) I'd go install the three versions for a test run. The good thing is you'll get some practice with installations.

[u/Important_Hunt_1882 → u/AnarchistTerrarist]

If Kernel 6.8 is ok for you, stick with it!
4GB RAM could be too low for Mint, but you could try XFCE.

[u/a_n_d_r_e_]

I converted my not-that-old-but-below-average travel laptop to Linux a year-ish ago (Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 AMD Ryzen 5 with 8GB RAM).

It was unusable with Windows 10, perfectly stable now.

Medium and high-end 10 years old PCs are better equipped than mine, and expected to work even better.

I'll convert to Linux Mint my new ThinkPad T14 AMD as soon as I come home from this work trip.

[u/dotnetdotcom]

I'm running Fedora KDE on an 11 year old desktop with an AMD processor and AMD video card.  

I wouldn't recommend disabling updates. There are so many dependencies something will break.

[u/fallen_one_fs]

Ok.

RAM usage is low, but you should be careful with desktop environments, Cinnamon, the default one, is heavier on memory than Xfce, so if your RAM is really low, like 4GB or less, prefer Xfce, it's lighter, faster, better for low specs, otherwise Cinnamon works just fine. Note: it's not that Cinnamon won't work, it will, Mint with Cinnamon memory usage while idle is around 900MB to 1.1GB, add a browser to that and you'll jump to 2GB, maybe more, add something else and you'll have less than 1GB of free memory, so Xfce for low RAM.

Now updates. There's an update manager that comes with the system, it allows you to choose what and when to install anything, don't want updates, then don't install them, leave them on the manager for when you want them, if you want them right now, then just click install and you're done, on rare occasions, when some core system packages are updates, it will ask for a reboot, but it's very rare, I've seen this like 3 times in about a year using Mint.

For customization: everything you can think of can be changed. Color, position, transparency, font, if you can see it, you can most likely change it, few, VERY few things cannot be changed.

[u/Vagabond_Grey]

System requirements: 64-bit system, 4 GB of RAM (minimum), 64 GB hard drive (greatly depends on your use case).

I had a Core 2 Duo laptop with 4GB of RAM and Mint's flagship release, Cinnamon, worked well for my use case. Currently the least capable laptop I'm using is a T14 Gen1 with 32 GB of RAM with zero issues.

Updates: your choice. you can even go as far as disabling notifications if you want to.

Customization: I've seen many alter Mint to the point where it doesn't look like it but, it does involve jumping through several hoops. Personally, I accept the default because I don't have any issues with it. Heck, I still use the default wallpaper. LOL

EDIT:

As for USB drive size, 8GB minimum (if you can even find one). I use Ventoy to format the USB drive to be bootable. Then I download the LiveCD (i.e. ISO images) from Mint onto the DATA partition of USB drive set by Ventoy.

There are many other software to use like Ventoy such as Rufus or balenaEtcher but I've had zero problems with Ventoy and I like that I don't have to reformat my USB drive once Ventoy is installed. All you have to do is add or remove the ISO images to suit your needs and boot off it when you're ready.

[u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_]

Decade old PC will obviously be slower but that is certainly not done for Linux 

Mint will start and run in under 2GB of ram on most machines, MATE about 70MB less than Cinnamon, XFCE about 70MB less than MATE.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/1dr4s3t/mint_22beta_memory_usage/

Exact number vary by hardware, what drivers and kernel modules are loaded. 

But just booting in under 2GB is not very useful, you probably also want to run software on this machine and that takes RAM, biggest abuser be web browsers and web pages. 

Here 4GB is barely usable, 8GB is better, 16 and up preferred. 

You could block updates if you prefer, but you really shouldn't, in Linux you have ultimate authority on everything. But updates are far less annoying in Linux. 

USB stick, I would get at least 8GB, in fact you may have a hard time finding one that small.

For appearance changes stick withing the included tools for a bit until you know your way around.

[u/devildog8466]

This is my setup. about 15 years old. works perfectly. use it as a emby server, file server and watch streaming videos with Brave Broweser on a 70" Tv. I use the built in integrated video.

OS: Linux Mint 22.3 x86_64

Host: 4480A5U (ThinkCentre M91p)

Kernel: Linux 7.0.0-38-generic

Uptime: 6 hours, 31 mins

Packages: 2141 (dpkg), 8 (flatpak)

Shell: bash 5.2.21

Display (V705-H3): 1920x1080 @ 1.25x in 69", 60 Hz [External]

Desktop Environment: Cinnamon 6.6.9

Window Manager: Muffin (X11)

WM Theme: Mint-Y-Dark-Orange (Mint-Y)

Theme: Mint-Y-Dark-Orange [GTK2/3/4]

Icons: Mint-Y-Orange [GTK2/3/4]

Font: Ubuntu (10pt) [GTK2/3/4]

Cursor: Bibata-Modern-Classic (24px)

Terminal: GNOME Terminal 3.52.0

Terminal Font: DejaVu Sans Mono (10pt)

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 (8) @ 3.80 GHz

GPU: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller @ 1.35 GHz [Integrated]

Memory: 3.03 GiB / 15.44 GiB (20%)

Swap: 0 B / 2.00 GiB (0%)

Disk (/): 18.42 GiB / 456.88 GiB (4%) - ext4

Disk (/media/lrtv/WDC USB): 652.16 GiB / 1.82 TiB (35%) - exfat

Disk (/mnt/storage): 123.33 GiB / 1.82 TiB (7%) - ext4

[u/BenTrabetere]

Firstly, system requirements?

Please read the FAQ and other documentation.

And second is updates. I'm just curious how those work. Am I able to disable them, choose what gets added/changed, etc?

Best practice is to apply all updates as quickly as possible. Do not pick and choose - the Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint teams have done that for you. Here is what Clem had to say on the matter.

And any other beginner things I may need to know

Spend a lot of quality time at the Easy Linux Tips Project.